incant v 1.5
Copyright 1999 by Chris Allen <fastjack@fastjack.turf.org>
incant is under the GPL, version 2, or, at your option, any later version.
All terms and conditions therein listed apply.
Portions of code in incant.tk adapted from tkDict, copyright by John McLaughlin
<johnmcl@mailexcite.com>
His code is under his licensing:
This comes with absolutely no warranties of any kind
Feel free to use any parts of this for any use whatsoever
As it is adapted, it is also under my licensing (not much conflict there...)
incant is a dict (dictionary) service client package. It includes a tcl-based command line version, suitable for piping, and a tcl/tk-based graphical client with an interface intuitive enough to be used immediately, yet powerful for those who actually read the documentation. Both clients are standalone.
- Use
incant [-x] [wordpart1] [wordpart2]
or incant [-x] [quoted multiword term] -x turns off the GUI
Which is to say, you can query hypertext transfer protocol as:
incant "hypertext transfer protocol"
or
incant hypertext transfer protocol
When querying with a regular expression query, simple enter the regular
expression as you would a word, however, a word of warning is
needed... regexp queries can generate a meg or so of text if
done hastily. Please add tight bounds to your queries, for the
sake of yourself, and the people nice enough to run dict.org
Bindings:
Click - on highlighted term looks it up
Right Click - on any one word looks it up
PgUp, PgDn, ArrowUp, ArrowDn do what you'd expect
Right/Left arrows are forward and back
Version 1.5 includes:
forward and back browsing buttons with infinite history
dictionary lookups with fallback to pattern matching if a word is not
found
autoloading of and selection menu of all dictionaries available on the
remote host
browsing of dictionary entries
link highlighting
commandline and gui client versions
term or single-word-of-term link lookups
support for multiple-word lookups, such as "bump off"
user customizable colors and host/port
graceful logoff, and semi-graceful error handling
Please send all comments and suggestions, whether you like incant, hate
it, or just find it useful. If suggestions are possible to
implement, odds are that I will add that suggestion.
- Caveats
Most protocol handling is rather blanketed... Specifically, generic error codes will pop up a wonderfully raw dialog with the server's message. Only a few codes are explicitly handled. There are no plans to change this.
All patches/comments/bug reports cheerfully accepted (but not near finals week).
There is an annoying bug which causes "random" newlines to be inserted into definitions. This is based in a TCL/TK sockets handling problem, and will never be fixed. Fortunately, it is only aesthetic, and not terribly annoying.
- Files
README - the readme CHANGELOG - the changelog incant - command line version/wrapper incant.tk - tk version
If you don't want one of the clients, just nuke the one you don't want and rename the one you do to incant. The incant wrapper uses tcl only, and can be used to call either incant.tk (be default) or continue running itself (with -x).
http://www.turf.org/departments/publishing/incant/
